Chapter 262: No One Escapes

Chapter 262: No One Escapes

The metallic vent cover of the overhead air conditioner was slowly pushed aside.

It had to be pushed upward because it was wedged into its slot.

The 25-centimeter vent opening was exposed, and Xiao Yu, standing on a ladder, leaned forward to take a peek.

His expression shifted noticeably.

Inside lay a pitch-black metallic ventilation duct.

It wasn’t the 25 centimeters he had expected.

Instead, it measured… 50 centimeters!

The entire duct was 50 centimeters wide, except at the bend connecting to the indoor ceiling where it remained 25 centimeters.

“How is it?”

Wu Jia, steady on the ladder below, asked.

“This is it,” Xiao Yu replied in a low tone.

“Damn!”

Wu Jia let a curse slip.

Finding a clue wasn’t always a cause for celebration.

It sometimes felt like criminals were mocking your intelligence.

That’s just how clues in a case tend to be.

The more you believe something is impossible, the more likely it is to happen.

With both hands, Xiao Yu slipped into the duct.

Anyone familiar with central air systems knows

that this kind of installation requires a main unit.

These are usually placed on a building’s rooftop.

The main unit forces air into the building’s primary ducts, from which subsidiary ducts branch off to individual rooms…

The Stash Room was located in an old building fitted with those vintage iron ventilation ducts, suspended by thin steel rods.

A 50-centimeter iron duct can easily support the weight of an adult.

Crawling slowly, Xiao Yu didn’t worry about getting his clothes dirty.

After all, someone had already traversed this passage and cleared away the old dust.

He continued until he reached the main duct opening on the fourth floor, then descended to the third floor…

Eventually, Xiao Yu emerged in a storage room on the first floor.

After placing a call, Wu Jia arrived and, eyeing the ceiling’s vent, wore a dark, unsettled expression.

They had pieced together the clues from the Stash Room and deduced how the intruder had gotten in.

It was time to examine the outside.

“This is it.”

Xiao Yu’s eyes fixed on the storage room’s window.

It appeared they’d entered from there.

He opened the window, revealing the rear of the Stash Room building.

Three meters away, a four-meter-high wall stood.

“They climbed the wall?”

A puzzled Wu Jia shook his head while muttering, “No way. There’s a surveillance camera outside; if they climbed the wall, they’d have been seen.”

“No.”

Shaking his head, Xiao Yu hoisted himself over the windowsill. Like a nimble raccoon, he jumped outside. Scanning his surroundings, his gaze landed on a grimy sewer manhole cover. “They entered from underground!”

In past cases, he’d learned that many criminals used the city’s underground sewage network to commit their crimes.

Who would have thought that urban drainage systems could be exploited by criminals?

And those networks stretched throughout the entire city, covering nearly every area.

They weren’t confined to any specific zone.

Some criminals make use of these drainage routes to gain entry.

Because hardly anyone would ever consider it.

Who would think that someone could commit a crime in such a filthy, stinking underground corridor…

“I’ll go now.”

Taking a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, Wu Jia donned them and laughed, saying to Xiao Yu, “I can’t let you do all the work!”

“Alright,” Xiao Yu agreed.

Watching Wu Jia lift the manhole cover and descend underground, Xiao Yu shook his head with a smile.

This guy sure was built for the dirty work!

An hour later.

At a sewer manhole 600 meters from the Stash Room, outside a residential complex, a grimy, stinky Wu Jia sat on a curb. He accepted a cigarette from Xiao Yu, his eyes crinkling in contentment as he took a drag. “Top-quality stuff, what a great smoke!”

Without delay, Xiao Yu passed the cigarette pack to Wu Jia.

“Definitely a top-tier smoke,” Wu Jia commented happily as he stowed the pack.

Laughing contentedly, Wu Jia tucked away the pack.

“What a load of crap, man!” Xiao Yu chuckled, shaking his head.

“So, are we bosses now?”

“Cut the nonsense—you’re just a lowly cop!”

Suppressing his smile, Xiao Yu pulled out his phone.

“Gao Shengli, pull up the Tianyan Surveillance Camera footage from the air vent on the apartment building in XX District, Capital City S!”

……

Half an hour later.

A police car arrived.

Gao Shengli, Director of the Serious Cases Department, approached Xiao Yu and Wu Jia, handing over a tablet.

He played the surveillance video and fast-forwarded to just before the crime…

Early in the morning.

An unlicensed commercial vehicle appeared in the footage.

Two men stepped out of the car.

Their features were obscured by masks and hats.

One of the men stood around 1.8 meters tall.

The other was slightly shorter.

Neither had particularly robust builds.

They retrieved a… tent from the car.

After assembling it, they placed it over the manhole cover.

They also took two roadblock signs from the car and set them on either side of the tent.

The signs bore the three words, “Under Construction.”

Then the two men entered the tent…

Around 4 PM, the pair emerged from the tent.

They packed up the tent and the roadblock signs and sped off in the car…

“It’s them!”

Pulling his eyes away from the tablet, Xiao Yu said coldly.

Both Wu Jia and Gao Shengli shared cold, piercing looks.

“They executed this crime with meticulous planning,”

Xiao Yu continued, “First, they are locals—their skin tone, eye color, and facial features reveal that.

Secondly, they’re well acquainted with the urban drainage network and the Stash Room’s air ducts. We can deduce they must have two sets of… blueprints.

During the crime, they certainly had a general plan—timing, the moment to strike, and something else… In the past, they must have scouted the Stash Room and inspected its air ducts. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment act.”

At that, Xiao Yu looked at Gao Shengli. “Gao, check if there’s been any recent maintenance or cleaning on the air ducts at the Stash Room. See if any outsiders have been in.”

“Got it!” Gao Shengli nodded.

“Wu,”

Xiao Yu turned to Wu Jia, “you head to the Road Management Department and see if anyone recently looked over the city’s drainage blueprints.”

“Okay,” Wu Jia agreed.

After the two left, Xiao Yu returned to the Stash Room.

Standing at the crime scene, he stared at two patches of blood on the ground that had turned a dark purple.

“Fallen brothers, watch over us from above,” he murmured.

“Rest assured, not one of these bastards will escape!”